Throughout their twisted custody battle over daughter Nahla, Halle has thrown Gabriel under the bus. She purposely wants to destroy his image so that she looks like a super mom!

Things have gotten downright dirty in the custody battle between Halle Berry and Gabriel Aubry over 2-year-old Nahla, and it sure looks like Halle is the instigator. “She is planting stories about him. This is a total smear campaign,” a friend tells Us Weekly. And this isn’t out of the ordinary for Halle, who has pulled this kind of behavior before. But, is this all a part of her secret plan to ruin Gabriel’s good name or is Halle really concerned for her daughter’s well-being?

“Halle can be insecure and loves to make someone else the bad guy,” a source close to the actress, 44, says. And right now, that villain is Nahla’s father. “She’s on a mission to trash Gabriel. She’s vindictive.” People who have worked with Halle say that you have to watch your back around her. “She has a bad temper,” admits a close friend. “I love her to death, but if you cross her she goes nuts.” Which is pretty much what she’s been doing the past few weeks, calling Gabriel, 35, a racist and claiming that Nahla is not safe with him. “Gabriel has wanted nothing more than to move the process of Nahla’s custody along quickly and quietly,” an insider tells Star magazine. “He was really blindsided by the hurtful comments from Halle’s camp.”

But, this kind of behavior is nothing new for Halle. After she ended her marriage to baseball player David Justice in 1997, she filed a temporary restraining order (David denies he ever threatened her) and said the divorce nearly drove her to commit suicide. In 2004, Halle called her marriage to Eric Benet “horrific,” and claimed that he was a sex-addict, ultimately destroying Eric’s image.

This time, Halle was ticked off by her jealousy over Gabriel’s fling with Kim Kardashian, which is totally hypocritical because she’s involved with French actor Olivier Martinez. “Kim is younger and hotter than Halle, who can be incredibly vain,” a source tells Star. “It drove her crazy to see them together in public.” Additionally, a source explains to Us Weekly that Halle did not want Nahla “involved in a reality show” and was angry that cameras would be following her.

Halle, cameras follow you and your daughter every day, and you have no problem with that. Do you only want them to see you with her so that you come across as some sort of a super mom?

Right now, it appears that Gabriel is taking the high road and has refused to talk about the racism comment or the apparent sperm donor email. “There’s no way Gabriel would even consider leaking any of that material,” a source tells Star. “To him nothing is more important than sparing Nahla from any further embarrassment when she’s old enough to understand what went down between her parents…He knows that airing dirty laundry in public would only be hurtful to Nahla — now and in the future.” So HollyMoms, what do you think is going on here? Is Halle doing the right thing by filing for full custody or should she quit the dirtiness and straighten things out for the sake of her daughter?